Introducing the new Disqus and F.A.Q.

Last July, Disqus launched "the new Disqus" an evolution of the core discussion platform. Over 75% of sites that now use DIsqus use the new Disqus. We’re proud of that fact but it also creates some new realities for us. Despite our reach across the web, we’re a small team and need to focus our efforts on making Disqus a more holistic and mutually beneficial experience for as many of our stakeholders as possible. Part of that involves retiring old versions of Disqus.

We know you'll have questions. Below is an FAQ that should answer most of the questions you're likely to have. If it doesn't, please visit our support page. If you're interested in providing feedback on the new Disqus, please take this 1-minute survey.

What does it look like?

F.A.Q.

How do I turn on the new Disqus?

The new Disqus is available to anyone! Simply visit disqus.com and click "Get this on your site" to enable the new Disqus for any of your sites. Please note that all English sites using the free version of Disqus have been updated automatically as of March 13th, 2013.

How do I turn off the new version of Disqus?

Once it is enabled, the new Disqus cannot be turned off.

Will my settings be lost if I enable the new Disqus?

No, all you settings are safe!

Why does Disqus now load comments inside an iframe?

For the most part, customization is different in the new Disqus because we decided to completely re-implement our commenting embed inside of an iframe. This iframe is hosted on disqus.com and, as such, the browser won't let your website apply styles to it using CSS statements. We did this for a few very important reasons:

The iframe is part of our solution to provide full indexing of Disqus comments by Google and other search engines, without having to duplicate content on your website (e.g., through a WordPress plugin).

There are many publisher websites that have errant !important CSS rules that would style Disqus inappropriately, often without their knowing.

The iframe provides better privacy to users. Most commenting solutions (including Intense Debate, Livefyre, and, yes, our original Disqus implementation) are rendered directly on the publisher's (your) website. This means that some identifying data about the user is accessible to the publisher whether they commented or not. The new Disqus avoids this completely.

We don't want Disqus to look out of place on your website. We automatically show a light or dark color scheme depending on your main font color. And we apply your website's main anchor color to comments. We'll be adding more rules like this shortly. More information about how we currently apply these rules can be found in our Disqus appearance documentation.

How can I change [feature X]?

In the past, a number of display quirks and user confusion issues arose due to inconsistent styling or interference from other custom elements on pages. With our new iframe approach (see above), we're able to avoid a lot of those issues as well as greatly improve important features like SEO and security. This does mean certain elements are less configurable but we are continually looking at what can and should be customized sustainably going forward.

Currently, the following features from Disqus Classic are now set as the following defaults:

Threading: reply comments are always "nested" and cannot be loaded as a "flat" thread.

It's important to note that Disqus will continue to evolve and we'd love to hear your thoughts on these changes. Send us your feedback.

Why is Disqus showing at only half the width of my column?

We’ve seen some sites apply the following CSS rule that causes this problem — try removing it:

#disqus_thread { position: inline-block; }

Does this mean I should disable SEO features in the WordPress plugin, e.g., server-side HTML rendering?

While we are currently working to improve SEO out-of-the-box for Disqus that functionality has not been implemented system-wide yet. We will make an official announcement on our blog when that's ready.